


Six Lives Doctor Gaius Baltar Did Not Survive

by archbishopmelker



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:59:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archbishopmelker/pseuds/archbishopmelker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Are you familiar with this play? A slaughterhouse--)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Lives Doctor Gaius Baltar Did Not Survive

**Ironically**

In the beginning she took such pains to hide it. Mirrors on the ceiling in that tacky hotel? Not her scene, she said. Get another room. Mirrors fore and aft in that changing room? Keep the dress on. The glass is cold.

And if he has any objections? Say something religious. His eyes glaze right over.

Later, as she became more and more convinced that he knew, deep down--he knew her so well--and as she grew simultaneously, contradictorally, aware that, like the opposite of a vampire, he saw very little in mirrors aside from his beautiful self--she grew far more careless.

And now, ah, now they're so close, she's so close, to victory, wet and slippery in the shower in the master bathroom in his house on the hill, now and he stumbles in his rhythm and she looks over her shoulder at the medicine cabinet mirror hanging open, the red glow of her spine, his eyes--disappointingly--genuinely surprised. Confused. But his mind's engaged now, and even though they are oh so close, well, they still need a bit more time than that.

She sighs, and takes his beautiful face firmly in her perfect hands, and kisses him, tenderly, and breaks his neck.

**Slowly**

The sky above the ruins of his house is clouding over, when he returns from watching his last hope fly away. You're not giving up your seat for anyone, Helo. Gods, he wishes he could believe in a hell he might hope to meet that woman in someday.

Someday.

He climbs up and up the hill, coming home, gone so long, he'd forgotten how steep, and he's burning now with a fever that makes everything seem even stranger that it is.

The gate is open, as he left it.

The grounds are still green, beneath the darkening sky.

And her corpse is still there.

He stays well back from it. Skirts around. It's been, what, three days now? Or longer. He has watched the machines marching much too close by as he lay in the field. He has lain very still, and imagined that perhaps they were on their way to fetch her.

But her corpse is still right where he left it. Where he crawled out from under it.

"Not a machine," he says. To no-one. There's pieces of glass in her, and her blood is on the pieces of glass all around.

He sits down, heavy all over with this fever, and leans back against what was a wall, and half-sleeps, and half-wonders if he ought to bury her. A little, at least. Before the rain.

"No."

He opens his eyes.

"Leave it, Gaius. Come away from there."

He turns his head. And there she is, coming in through the absence of door, like she's done a hundred times before, coming home to him, alive and perfect.

Or there something is. Something very like her, except that its bare perfect feet leave no imprint in the ash as it approaches. But its hand as it strokes his hair seems as real as anything is anymore.

"Come away from that thing," she tells him. "Come with me."

She takes him by the hand and leads him deeper into the ruins of his mansion. The kitchen. The gleaming enormous restaurant range lying broken beneath a beam and hissing gas. He touches it sadly.

She rolls her eyes. "You never used it. Not once."

"No, don't you remember," he says, "there was that unfortunate attempt at a chocolate fondue--" But the thought turns his stomach violently, unexpectedly, and he retches at length, and she smooths his hair back away from his face while he does, even though she's not there.

"There," she says when he's done for the moment, and he goes to the place where she's pointing, and stoops and retrieves from the rubble an unbroken bottle of something expensive and strong. He laughs. Twists the top off. "Careful not to spill," she admonishes him as he drinks. The bottle's so heavy. He looks for a level surface to set it down on, a safe place to sit.

"Not yet." She shakes her head. Pulls him along, clutching the bottle, the corridor lurching around him, to the master bathroom, which is comparatively intact, though the smell of the stagnant sewer water all over the floor makes him retch again.

"There," she says.

He struggles to focus on what she's pointing at: the medicine cabinet, hanging diamondwise on the wall from one screw, but its mirror like the bottle rather miraculously intact. The thing in the mirror staring back at him. "Oh, gods," he says.

"No, not that. Don't look. Try not to look." She swings the cabinet open and bottles of pills tumble out, into the sink, rattle like bones, like teeth. "There should be something there," she says.

He nods.

She helps him back out to the bedroom. Shakes the comforter free of debris. He sits down on the bed. "I can't do it," he says.

"Just take enough to go to sleep," she coaxes. Tips the heavy, heavy bottle up to his lips. Sits down beside him.

"I don't want to die," he says, leaning against her.

She holds his head in her lap, comforting, though her lap is really only ash and shards of glass; and runs her hands through his imaginary hair. "I know," she says, over and over, as the rain begins to fall.

**Suddenly**

Sharon Valerii's test results glow very bright red on the screen.

Doctor Baltar grins a little too widely at her. "Green. Very bright green," he says.

Sharon stands, almost defies gravity, so much more relieved than she'd thought she would be. "That's so great."

"Isn't it?"

"Can I see?"

"Well, no, I mean, these things are highly classified--"

Something in Sharon's face shifts, then. Something in her eyes.

"Yes, I can see that," the doctor sneers at the empty air somewhere beside her, and he takes a quick small step sideways, toward the hatch, and the last thing he sees before nothing forever is very bright red.

**Disgustingly**

"I know you very well," says Caprica Six to the man surrendering, while his twin at her shoulder snorts derisively.

She glares at him. Her imaginary Gaius. He shrugs. "I'm just telling you--" He waves his hands, indicating all and everything. "--I don't think you do."

She looks around. He has a point. The place is a mess, and stinks of bodily fluids and used alcohol, and the man in the middle of it is...not altogether unlike the place.

"We just need some time to get reacquainted," she mumbles.

"Beg pardon?" a Doral asks.

Her imaginary Gaius just laughs and lights up an imaginary cigar.

"Leave us, would you?" she says, after necessary papers have been signed. Her people cast distasteful glances at one another but then obligingly file out.

"Um...yes...you too, I suppose," the president says, somewhat reluctantly, to his entourage.

"Just the two and a half of us," the figment smirks. "How romantic." The president pours out two glasses of something. The figment pouts.

Caprica Six leans forward, closer to him, the one she came for. "Gaius--listen--" she says. He nods. "I know it's been hard--"

"With all the booze he's got in him? Bloody miracle that."

She elbows empty air. Closes her eyes, breathes. "--but we're on the same side now, and with your complete co-operation--"

"If we will just offer them our complete co-operation," the president echoes, rehearsing--

"Oh, now that's just pathetic."

"Things can...only get better...excuse us a moment, would you, Gaius?" She grabs the figment's arm and drags him away, over by the window. Pretends she's surveying the wasteland below. He leans on the windowsill. Surveys her.

"What's the matter with you?" she hisses. "Are you seriously jealous of yourself?"

He rolls his eyes. "Of course. Who wouldn't be? I'm not jealous of that, though."

She glances over her shoulder. The man--Gaius, the real Gaius--has his head in his arms on the desk like a tired child, or a bored one, or one waiting for the bombs.

She turns back. "Please," she says to the figment. "Just leave us alone."

"Suit yourself." He pushes himself upright, and flicks his imaginary cigar in an arc that would theoretically terminate atop Gaius' actual head, and she would swear she can smell it, tangled up in there, burning, and she waits for him to say, well, yes, she should know that smell well enough, burning hair, burning flesh--

But he's gone.

***

She awakes, alone, in Gaius' bed, to bright morning light and a hand on her shoulder and a whisper in her ear and her first thought is that it's him even though he's been gone for a month.

It's not, though. "Caprica," the Doral says, "we have a problem."

Sleepy and naked she follows him through a gauntlet of centurions, Colonial One is quarantined until further notice, further instructions, we have a problem.

The president is curled up in front of the toilet, naked, his face in a puddle of half-congealed vomit, hair plastered down in it. Eyes open.

She kneels down and touches him. His body is cold.

"So. What's our spin?" asks the Doral, bored.

"Get out," she snarls.

"Well, let us know. Soonish."

She waits for the door to shut before allowing herself to cry.

"Oh, there, there." Hand on her shoulder, warm and soft, the scent of good soap and better cigars. "Of the billions you've killed, he's probably one of the million least worth your tears."

"What am I going to do?" she asks.

"Put some clothes on," he suggests, helping her to her feet. "We've had this talk. Modesty--"

"Modesty." She nods.

"And clean that up," he murmurs, walking out the bathroom door.

"Clean that up," she snaps at the centurions, and follows him, back to the bedroom.

"Now listen--" he murmurs. "--the president is unwell--"

"The president is unwell," she echoes, rehearsing, sliding on her underwear.

"--but is expected to make a full recovery."

"But is--"

"Smile, darling. Don't let your voice crack like that."

She swallows. "But is expected to make a full recovery."

**Charmingly**

"Good morning, and welcome to all graduates," the president says with a smile. "You know, funny story, I was advised not to attend this ceremony. They told me there were security concerns." She watches him in fascination, as he pauses for the proper amount of time. "But I said I had far too much faith in you to be worried about something like that."

Pause, applause, she imagines him thinking. It's uncharitable, but almost certainly correct.

Still, she loves to watch him when he's in the spotlight. All the sorrows that line his face now, the years and miles and frames of reference that separate old Caprica from the New, seem to vanish there, and his smile becomes momentarily genuine. It's as though he can only truly see the face of adoring God in that pitiless glare, and reflected in slivers from the faces of the many admiring--or, at the very least, attentive--humans. "You--each and every one of you--are a vital part of the dream of a new tomorrow." Pause. Applause. Move down into the crowd. Shake hands. Eye contact. "Congratulations." Shake hands.

He's thinking about sex now, she supposes. Performing this repetitive task. And when they have sex tonight he'll be thinking about the spotlight.

"Congratulations."

The young man nods. "I'll see you soon, Nora," he mutters.

The president furrows his brow, roused out of his pornographic daydream. "My name's not Nora," he starts to say, but never finishes.

**Or From a Great Height**

"Close your eyes," she sings, "go to sleep."

"Well, at least I'll get to die with my underpants on," he mutters, shredding the trousers of the suit he used to wear when he was someone.

"Hush," she says. "Don't let the cat out of the bag."

"What? Yes. No." He starts to weave the bits of fabric back together, into something new, more suited to this time and place. "Though soon enough it'll be dead for certain. Oxygen deprivation."

She smiles. "That's boxes." She slides the new rope between fingertips. "This is good work. You're very clever with your hands."

"Yes, so I've b--"

"Hide it," she hisses. "Someone's coming."

He shrugs, slips the rope between the mattress and the springs. Supposes they'll either take note of his absence of trousers or, more likely, all things considered, not.

"Hello, Doctor."

He looks up from his spot on the floor. "Oh, hello, Mister Gaeta. Come in. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about--uh--Earth..." Gaius sighs. Absence of trousers noted.

Gaeta crouches beside him. "And--uh--brought you something." Fishes a flask from one of the pockets of his uniform and holds it out. Gaius just stares at it. "Good stuff, sir," Gaeta says. "Won't go blind drinking this."

Gaius cocks his head and listens thoughtfully to the air before taking the flask. Listens some more before unscrewing the top and taking a healthy swig. "You're right, Mister Gaeta, this is very good," he says.

"It should be," Gaeta whispers mock-conspiratorially. "I stole it from Colonel Tigh."

Gaius shrugs. Tries to. Feeling floppy. "Suppose I might go half-blind, then."

Gaeta shakes his head sadly. "You're a horrible person, Gaius."

"Yes," Gaius says to that spot in the air. "I know."


End file.
